Americans and Cubans Approaches to the Platt
Amendment
by Barry Wright
Essay: Americans and Cubans Approaches to the Platt Amendment
Pages: 10
Rating: 3 stars
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• Americans and Cubans Approaches to the Platt Amendment.pdf
• Americans and Cubans Approaches to the Platt Amendment.doc
The U.S.’s relationship with Cuba has been arduous and stained with mutual suspicion and obstinateness, and the
repeated U.S. interventions. The Platt agreement and Castro’s rise to power, served to introduce the years of
difficulty to come, while, the embargo the U.S. placed on Cuba, enforced the harsh feelings. The two major events
that caused the most problems were the Bays of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis.
In 1903, the U.S. published the Platt Amendment, which was a set of guidelines for Cuba to follow (Blight 165). The
Platt amendment was named after Senator Orville Platt of Connecticut. The U.S. had been occupying Cuba since
the Spanish American war in 1898, and Cuba wanted them out, so the U.S. set up eight rules for Cuba to agree to
before the U.S. would leave them alone to establish and run their government (http://www.state.gov/r/pa/). The
first three articles of the Platt Amendment can be seen after this paper. Americans and Cubans seemed to have a
different approach to the Platt Amendment:
Americans think they used the Platt Amendment to mediate and resolve internal disputes in Cuba, whereas
Cubans tend to think that the amendment was designed to permit the U.S. to intervene in Cuban affairs for its
own selfish purposes, finally, Americans tend to think that their investments in Cuba contributed to the nations
development, whereas the Cuban Government has tended to look at the economic relationship as exploitative
(Blight 43).
The U.S. had to have some sort of control and a permanent existence after withdrawing their military from Cuba.
The Cubans feel that this amendment has made it possible for the U.S. to cause trouble or intervene anytime they
want.
The majority of the problems in U.S. relations with ...